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M. A. HIGGINS.

. CARPET STRETUEER. No. 335,356. Patented Feb. 2, 1886.

` kfw ewmt UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE.

MASOBT A. HIGGINS, OF AURORA, ILLINOIS, ASSIGNOR TO H. AMBROSE HIG- GINS, OF SAME PLACE.

CARPET-STRETCHER.

SPECIFICATION forming part of Letters Patent No. 335,356. datedFebruary 2,1886.

Application filed October lli, 1885.

To all whom it may concern:

Be it known that I, MASON A. IIIGGiNs, of Aurora, in the county of Kane and State of Illinois, have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Carpet-Stretchers; and I do hereby declare that the following is a full, clear, and exact description of the invention, which will enable others skilled in the art to which it appertains to make and use the same, 1o reference being had to the accompanying drawings, and to letters of reference marked thereon, which forni a part of this specification.

My invention has for its main object such a construction as will enable the implement to stretch the carpet by pulling upon the under side or upon the upper side of the fabric, at option, and whereby, While applicable for stretching ordinary ingrain carpets when laying the same upon a floor or elsewhere, it may,

2o when stretching and laying other kinds of fabries having a pile or tuft on one side or face only-such as Brussels, tapestry, XVilton, and velvet carpets-avoid the pulling with its hooks of such pile or tuft, and thereby defacing and damaging the goods; and the invention also relates to the construction and manner of applying and securing the hooks, and to other particulars hereinafter stated.

In the drawings, Figure 1 illustrates in perspective View a stretcher embodying my improvements; Fig. 2, a cross-section ofthe cross` beam which carries the stretching hooks or teeth; Fig. 3, the implement with its rack-bar and toothed cross-bar reversed or turned np- 3 5 side down, to enable the teeth to seize and pull the fabric on its under side when advisable;

Fig. 4., one of the headed pins before being bent; Fig. 5, one of these pins in its bent form,

but detached from its bar; Fig. 6, a detail 4o showing the yoke on the lever. Fig. 7, the

end hook of the lever detached 5 and Fig. 8, a

fragmentary detail, showing in plan view one end of the rack-bar, its racks, and their projecting ears.

A is the customary lever for operating the implement; B, the rack-bar pivoted thereto, and C the toothed cross-bar secured to the outer end of the bar B. The bar B is peculiarly made and peculiarly connected to the 5o lever A. Itis provided with two sets of ratch- Serial No. 180,031. (No model.)

et-teeth, d and e-one on its upper and one on its under or opposite side-and which teeth may be made in the body of the bar, but are preferably made, as shown, in metallic plates F G, which are secured to opposite sides of the bar, these plates projecting beyond one end of the bar, as shown, to forni ears h t', by which they may be removably connected to the lever A. Corresponding metal ears, j k, projecting from the lever A, to which they are secured 6o at a proper height from the lower end of the lever, serve as means for uniting the raekbar B to the lever by simply passing an appropriate pin or bolt, Z, through holes or punctures made therefor in the ears h t' j k. 65 A pawl, on, fulerumed on the lever A, serves for both racks. I prefer to make the ears 7' k in the ends of a yoke, n, which surroundsor spans three sides of the lever, as shown; and this adds materially to the strength of the le- 7o ver at that point where the pull upon the carpet comes. The lever A, I prefer to lnake of such length that the operator may stand erect 1n using the implement, thus gettingthe greatest leverage and making the stretcher very easy to operate. The hooks or teeth o also have a valuable peculiar-ity, growing out of their special shape, in connection with the manner in which they are inserted and applied to the cross-bar, making them unusually strong anddurableinuse,whileat the Sametime adapted, when the cross-bar and iaclcbars are turned upside down or reversed, to seize the carpet or other fabric on the under side, when desirable so to do, and they avoid all danger of injuring the finest fabrics. Usually the hooks have heretofore been made without heads, and bent to their ultimate shape before being inserted in the bar, and then their upper or straight ends are forced in or driven into holes made partially through the bar, the blows or pressure for such operation being necessarily made upon the bent or hook portion of the wire. This manner of making and inserting has many disadvantages-name- 95 ly, the hook is liable to injury either at its point or in its shape by the very act of inserting it, it is always ready, upon the slightest provocation, to turn on the inserted or upper end, as upon an axis or center, and thus rco the points of the several hooks will not lie in the same direction, and they cannot seize the cloth properly, for a single hook turned out of proper position will materially impair the efficiency of the others.v Being headless, they are apt, afier a little wear, to getloose, and some will project farther than others, and some -will drop out entirely, and there is no positive provision for holding` them tightly in the bar or to prevent their turning. By my iuvention I avoid these defects. The hooks o are each made with a head, as shown, and with a pointed end, and of a length sufficient to pass entirely through the bars in which they are inserted, and leave enough projecting to be bent into the hook form. sert-ed, they are straight, and straight holes adapted for them are made entirely through the bar. After they are inserted they are bent to shape, as will presently be described, and this very act of bending upon the bar as a bearing, coupled with the restraining power of the head, serves of itself very materially to hold the hook rmly, and positively precludes the dropping out of any hook; but in order more eifectually and positively to provide against anyliability or risk of the turning of the hooks out of their positions, and to insure that they shall, when once properly placed, continue to hold their positions, so that their pointed ends may always be substantially in line, a series of parallel grooves, p, is made transversely of the bar C, and extending severally from the holes in which the teeth are placed. Each tooth being inserted in its hole with its head against the top of the bar, its other or projecting end is bent backward and about at right angles, and thus is bent down into its appropriate groove, p. This bending binds the wire of the tooth to the bar both on its upper and lower side. At the same time the lodgment of the backWardly-bent portion in the groove holds it still more tightly, and prevents any turning around or shifting in position, and the tooth cannot be lost out or displaced. The points ofthe teeth are bent forward from the bentback part, as shown. These grooves also, by allowing the bent-back part of the teeth to lie in them substantially ush with the surface of the cross-bar, permit the carpet, when the hooks have seized it, to lie very close to this bar, and not out at the extreme tips or points of the hooks, for the shape of the bent part, it will be seen, tends under any material ull on the carpet to concentrate the bulk, if not all, of the strain at the angles qof the hook part, and thus makes the pull with the least practicable leverage on the teeth; or, in other words, the pull is in aline or direction lengthwise of the wire of which the teeth are made that is in a line corresponding with the line of the groove. The holes in the cross bar, in which the teeth are inserted before being bent to shape, may be somewhat smaller than the wire of which these teeth are made, and, as these teeth are driven into the cross-bar after the manner of driving nails by blows or press- When ini ure on the heads of the teeth, it will be seen that they can fit tightly in the wood from the head downward. In some cases the pointed and headed teeth may be driven into the bar from top to bottom without making preparatory holes in the bar; but I prefer to have the holes previously made. When putting down tufted or pile goods or any fabric where there is danger of the hooks displacing or pulling out any of the loops or tufts, the bolt l is simply withdrawn, the rack-bar B reversed, and the bolt l reinserted in its place. This then brings the hooks on the upper side of the cross-bar, and the device is ready for action, the hooks now seizing the fabric on its under Side-that is on that side usually called the back.77 The lower extremity of the lever A, instead of having a set of straight teeth, as customary, projecting from it, and which, by reason of the leverage and strain upon them, are liable to be bent or broken in use, has a single strong hook, r, shaped very similarly to vthose previously described, and inserted lengthwise in the end of the lever, which is re-enforced and protected by a metal thimble or band, s. This hook or pivotal point may be screwed into the end of the lever. Its forni permits its pointed extremity to be inserted close to the wash-board of a room. The giving ofthe strain in the line ofthe length of the wire composing it reduces the risk of damage or breakage of the hook to the minimum; The cross-bar C is beveled -on its toothed face, as seen at t and u, the front bevel, t, facilitating the easy seizure of the fabric by the hooks, and the rear bevel, a, permitting the cross-bar C and its hooks to take hold of the fabric more closely, although the bar B when in use has a position inclined toward the floor.

The stretcher may he made of either wood or metal. I prefer the former.

Headed curved teeth curving downward and forward through the draft-bar have been heretofore used; but such teeth had acontinuous forward inclination or curve, and were not bent backward upon the under side of the bar and then bent forward into a hookform, and consequently lacked the peculiar features and advantages hereinbefore stated as appertaining to those I have described in my above specification.

I claim- 1. In a carpet-stretcher, in combination with a cross-bar, headed stretcher-hooks extending entirely through the bar, and bent backward upon the under side of said bar, and then bent forward tov complete the hook shape, substantially as shown and described.

2. In a carpet-stretcher, a cross-bar which carries the stretching-hooks as made with transverse grooves p, extending backward from the holes made for the insertion of the hooks.

3. A carpet-stretcher having a cross-bar provided with stretching-hooks on one side only of such bar, but adapted to be readily' reversed and used with its hooks either above or below the bar, for the purpose of seizing either the under or upper side of the carpet, at option.

4. In a carpet-stretcher, the combination, with the operating-lever, of the reversible bar B and its attached hook-bar, substantially as set forth.

5. In combination, with the lever A and its pawl, the lever-bar B, provided with a rack, both 011 its upper and on its under side7 and secured to the toothed cross-bar C.

G. The reversible bar B, provided with projecting ears h z', combined with the yoke oz., spanning the lever A, and with a remov- 

